Bride.exe | JAYHOON [Hiatus]

1.1: SYSTEM LOADING...

༻♡⃛༺

At seven o'clock sharp in the evening, the air was damp and cold, and employees were still flooding in the building. While those who were inside were hard at work, the click-clacking of their keyboards tapped familiarity into Jay's eardrums. Jay stood silently in the middle of the room wearing VR glasses and gloves, he was about to run a test.

"Sir, we're about to start."

Jay hummed and plugged the headphones into his ear. Just about the time they pressed the button, Jay started feeling a strange sensation in his whole body through the special devices. The screen in front of his eyes flashed and he transferred to another world.

Jay took a deep breath and began walking forward. His location was on top of a grassy mountain with lots of constellations floating in the sky. But in reality, he was walking on a treadmill inside an empty white room. The sound effects made it seem more realistic. With every click the scenery changed. Jay walked through each world and cleared quests. After gaming for two hours straight, he took off the VR glass and sighed. It was one hell of a journey.

He stayed silent, looking at the team members, who were eagerly waiting for his answer. Jay's lips curved into a smile. The team members burst into joy and clapping. Some of them broke down crying, some hugged each other. Their hard work of two years paid off. Jay came out of the room and declared a company dinner to celebrate their success.

Everyone went back to their original seats after a while. There were still a few minutes before the dinner party. Jay sat on his desk with a heavy sigh. He was hiding something from everyone. Although the progress was great, he felt something was missing. Every protocol was correct. The concept and design were perfect, just like he had imagined it to be. The production team is working day and night, not taking rest or delaying. Some of them couldn't even go home for days and kept working on the development. Seeing them working so hard, Jay as the team leader, could never think of backing away. Everyone was happy, he should cherish the moment, and they could do even better next time.

Jay stretched his finger and rubbed his neck. He didn't sleep last two nights. The headache probably occurred because of that. He opened his laptop and started analyzing the files provided by the team. He checked one by one and didn't catch any errors. He scrolled downwards and suddenly something caught his eye. There was a file that had a different name and extension. To be specific, it looked odd among the others. It was an executable file named "bride.exe". Jay wondered why was it named differently and why there was 'bride' in the name. Their project was based on a fantasy VR game, not a love simulation one. Did someone mix up the files while transferring? He thought of checking it out. His finger trembles before he proceeds to click the file icon.

One small mistake and they could lose it all. Jay had a bad feeling about it. "Not every executable file is a virus, there's no chance that someone would-"

Jay paused when an encoded sequence of instructions popped up on the screen. It weirded him out, the data wasn't related to their game. Moreover, the screen went black and started loading something. The circle was moving round and round but nothing happened. Jay wasn't in the mood to waste time after a nonsense file. He closed it quickly and deleted the file permanently from his device. Then he shut it down. He should ask the team about the file right now but thought about doing it the next day.

For one second he thought what he was doing. They built a game, it was ready to launch. He should be happy about it. But his mind was roaming elsewhere. Lots of negative thoughts started poking him. What if the game never gets enough market rate, what would they do? How would he face his father? It was he, who made a bet first. It was he, who said that he didn't need his father's pity and started working in another company. But if they can't succeed this time, he'd have to go back to where he came from. He doesn't want that.